Keith DeCarlo

Some marketing is designed to pray upon the fears of consumers. This marketing strategy is widespread because it works, but is it ethical? This approach is applied to a myriad of products, some of which are completely meritless. One such product is the Lysol Healthy No-Touch Hand Soap System. Lysol’s marketing approach is to strike fear into consumers by telling them to avoid their germy hand pump. Lysol’s web site states “you and your family will never have to touch a germy soap pump again.”

People YOU’RE WASHING YOUR HANDS.

Who cares about a germy soap pump, you’re about to wash the germs off your hands anyway. So whether you use a soap pump or a No-Touch by the time you finish washing your hands the germs are all gone. Why would Lysol market this way? To make money of course. The No-Touch Hand Soap System will run you around $21.41 and soap refills at $9.99. Compared to Dial’s antibacterial pump soap dispenser that costs $2.49.a difference of $18.92. Both products kill 99.9% of germs so there is no added benefit for paying the large price difference. Consumers are essentially paying for peace of mind generated from the fear created in Lysol’s advertisement.

Most of us try not to touch our soap pumps with grimy hands because we don’t want to make a mess of our dispenser (one more thing to clean). So we use our wrist, forearm, elbow etc… to pump the soap into our free hand and at times this can prove to be quite a difficult task. But if you had the No-Touch soap dispenser you would not be faced with this problem. This approach is a lot more practical and ethical instead of playing on fears and hoping people miss the common sense factor that regardless of a germy pump, hands are going to be clean in the end. The germy hand pump is a moot point and has no bearing on having clean hands.

Which tactic would serve Lysol better: scare tactic or convenience of a hand-free pump?

Graphic Credit:
Animationfactory.com